This day, this week, marks 200 years since readers first clapped eyes on what was to become one of the most memorable first lines in English literature: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

The publicity material for Girls, the HBO series that claims to be "a pop culture mirror" reflecting the real lives of 20-somethings in New York. Surely the most benighted pre-liberation '50-style womanhood couldn't be any more humiliating than the conditions that liberated modern women routinely tolerate today.